Pedigree collapse and research gaps in your family tree

The Insights panel shows how far back one person's ancestry goes, who the furthest-back ancestor is on each of their four grandparents' lines, whether any ancestor appears more than once, where their family was, and who in the whole tree is still missing a birth date, a birthplace, a death place or their parents.

Open your tree, or try it as a guest with a GEDCOM file of up to 50 people.

Open Insights

Select the person you want to look at. Insights starts on them, or on the tree's home person when nobody is selected.
Open the ⋮ menu beside the tree's name and choose Insights. On a phone it is under More in the bottom bar. You can also press Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac) and type "insights".
To look at someone else, type their name in Insights about.

Every name in the panel is a link. Choosing one selects that person on the tree and keeps the panel open, so you can work down a list.

How far back the tree goes

How far back lists each generation above the person, from Parents up, with how many of its places your tree fills: "6 of 8" great-grandparents means two are still unknown. When the same ancestor fills more than one place, the row also says how many different people fill them.

Furthest back on each line

Each of the person's four grandparents starts a line, named by how it runs ("Father’s mother, Ellen Ward"). The row names the earliest ancestor you have found on that line, with their birth year and birthplace where the tree has them, and how many generations back they are. Each line's dot is the color Family colors in Look gives that line, and the words always say which line it is.

Where a line stops short, the row says so ("Mary Doyle’s parents aren’t in the tree yet.") with Add a parent, so the next step is one click away. Viewers don't see that button.

Pedigree collapse

Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents, and the number of places doubles each generation. When two cousins marry, their children's ancestors fill some of those places twice: the same great-grandparents appear on both the father's side and the mother's. Genealogists call this pedigree collapse. It is common in small communities, in royal and noble families, and in any tree that goes back far enough.

The Ancestors who appear twice card counts the places the person's ancestors fill and the different people filling them ("12 ancestors fill 14 places"). It names the couple nearest the person whose two sides share ancestors and how they were related, such as "were 1st cousins", and lists each ancestor who appears more than once.

Show on the tree turns the tree into the person's numbered pedigree chart, deep enough to reach the ancestors who repeat. Each of them is drawn once, and their card carries every number they hold, such as "8, 12", where the lines from both sides meet. To go back to the whole tree, turn off Pedigree in Look. To see how the couple are related, select both in the relationship calculator.

When nobody appears twice, the card says so. Only birth parents count here, the way they do in a pedigree chart; an adoptive, step or foster parent is not part of a person's ancestry.

Places

The Places card counts the places in the person's family, their ancestors and descendants with their partners, and the moves between them, the same ones the family migration map draws: "11 places in Daniel's family, with 10 moves between them". It names the three places the most people were at. Open map switches the tree to the map of that person's family.

Research gaps

Research gaps in the tree covers everyone in the tree, not only the person at the top of the panel. It counts who has:

No birth date
No birthplace
No death place, counted only among people with a death date
No parents recorded

Choose a row to see the people in it, and choose a name to go to them. No parents recorded leaves out anyone who married into the family: someone with no parents in the tree whose partner has them. Their parents are rarely the next thing to look for, and listing every partner hides the founders whose parents are. A list longer than 50 names says how many more there are; People finds the rest.

A connected AI assistant reads the same list when you ask it what your tree is missing (see Connecting an AI assistant).

On a shared link

Relatives viewing a public link can open Insights too. People the link shows as Private are left out of the research gaps and appear as Private without a link anywhere else in the panel, so the panel never names a living relative the link keeps out.

Frequently asked questions

Why does a generation say "8 of 8, 6 people"? Two of the eight places are filled by people who already fill another one. That is pedigree collapse, and the card under it says who they are.

Why is someone listed under "No parents recorded" when I know they married in? They are left out only when their partner has parents in the tree. Add their partner's parents, or their own, and they leave the list.

Is Insights free? Yes, on every tree and every public link.